I recently heard the term "Sustainable Survivability" (today specifically) and love the term. It is true that it sounds rather negative and will not catch on with the general public. The concept presented is that we cannot mitigate all the effects of global warming even if everybody took it seriously so we must be ready for our culture and lives to survive the negative results of global warming. Two nights ago I spent the night in a house built in 1910 in the worst thunderstorm I have ever witnessed. The wind blew full-sized hardwood pallets around the yard and the 4 hours of lightning knocked out the power 3 times for about an hour each time. This post is about the way we must design houses... not just to use less carbon-based fuels but to survive tornadoes and lightning strikes and flying debris. Power systems will fail on hot summers due to the hot wires sagging too close to the ground. Communities need to be ready for such power outages or high fuel prices or majorly devalued money. we need to be ready for long term crop failures due to flooding (half the fields where I live are uncultivated this year and still partially flooded at the end of june) insects, drought, vandalism (some farmers in my area actually had some crops harvested by unknown thieves), or genetic failures (some engineered seed varieties fail to be fertile after a certain number of generations but not always an intended thing). All these and many more I could list make many of the technologies often used in energy self-sufficient homes to be unsustainable in a tougher environment (both nature and human culture). I will be back to add solutions I have found to achieve a higher "sustainable survivability"

I used to have a blog about Earthship Villages and sustainable survivability through them having a small variety of manufacturing ability and talent, cooperative interior year around gardens and seasonal fields for grains and other food, pastures for some animals, and forest for backup wood stoves and materials. Well defended and use of golf cart type electric vehicles. Enough couples of the right age to prevent genetic erosion, and remote enough to be away from gangs of thieves and cannibals. Enough food storage capability to last through several bad seasons from AGW effects. I realized that not all Earthship Villages would make it as climate worsened, or if they were attacked by a more well armed and larger gang.With the idea of going past the tipping point for first tundra methane self-release, then oceanic methane hydrates self-release, to the point of worse conditions than the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 10 times as fast, and an Extinction Level Event by 2300 to 2500, the Earthship Village concept doesn't work as well.I thought of the Bushes and "Rev." Moon's vast acreage over the last untapped large aquifer in extreme northern Paraguay on the Bolivian and Brazil borders. How Bush had an airfield built nearby with 500 special forces type guards. An underground nuclear powered bunker complex with centuries of supplies, grow lights, strict population control, and air filtration. Then I realized that eventually they would have to surface during this period. Equatorial jungle type areas faired better during PETM, so perhaps they could survive with the proper testing equipment for toxins, and living in hot conditions on a diet that is a lot different. A "Brave New World"?There are additional problems. If the population does not have a die off event mid century and humans continue to burn fossil fuels until they are totally gone, then a runaway greenhouse effect could destroy the biosphere forever. If resource/overpopulation/religion driven warfare goes to large scale nuclear war, that could also sterilize most of the planet. The beginnings of lower strength magnetosphere and pole reversal have started, with the ozone layer still weaker. This is another thing that could be a problem for much of life on Earth. Low strength magnetosphere shield with low strength ozone shield and coronal mass discharge hit. Maybe the biosphere will be lucky.......

_________________"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”― Chief Seattle“Those Who Have the Privilege to Know Have the Duty to Act”…Albert Einstein

"Prepare for the worst but hope for the best" puts me in a more optimistic frame of mind. When great empires fall, they fall with a slow and painfull whimper and I expect our current world of "democracy" and energy dependence will fall the same way, decades of slowly worsening after-effects and lots of people hoping for a better world to arive. It is in such a future that opportunities for people to create a better way of doing everything. Yes, we may have ruined the globe permanently but we still have billions of lives to live for a few generations and I would think most will find a way to survive. I only hope to contribute to the betterment of lots of those people showing them how to be peaceful anarchists who make their own food. Note that this post was made with my cel phone so is an experiment in sustainable survivability in a world where all long wires become electrically charged due to a wave of solar particals when our magnetosphere is weak (and fry old-style electronics).

"Lets recycle another thread shall we. I'm all for providing second chances." Might as well be environmental.It is interesting that this year EarthshipVillageColorado started(10 years after my blog). I will be meeting Mike Reynolds and the staff next weekend. I will further give away some of my experienced building techniques, the course pour, soil cement, and slip forming for garden walls and tile look floors.This is a development of 200 Earthships just ESE of CoSpgs. http://www.earthshipvillagecolorado.com/I have not seen Ann or Fosgate, or many others here, lately. Good to see Iowanic back. Well, on subject, what can we do to survive various scenarios?1)A world depression induced by Cascadia and the melt down of the dollar? Induced by LaPalma? (both huge tsunamis and earthquakes), }population crash, species survival and more time to stop emissions, but return of CAGW without the reductions of emissions.{2)or a volcanic winter from Katla? }population crash, species survival and more time to stop emissions, but return of CAGW without the reductions of emissions.{3)A "limited" nuclear war? }population crash, possible nuclear biosphere poisoning{4)A ten year global volcanic winter by artificially blowing Yellowstone and Toba?}population crash and return of the biosphere to late interglacial norm, over a major recovery period of 400 years and absorption of most pollution within 50K years, survival of human species and most others{5)A thermal max with 95+% extinction level and 10 million year biosphere recovery? }survival 0{6)A runaway greenhouse effect with permanent destruction of the biosphere? }survival 0{Technology of the Folsom point, and bows and arrows, started the elimination of other species predators except diseases.Attitude of various religions led to lower self-predation. Inability to see the consequences of actions into the future led to black, dirty, stinky fossil fuel use. This stimulated the mammal population of humans into a crash population curve from the shallow curve around slowly changing sustainable long term population(1/2 during glacial phase). This overpopulation with greed caused pollution hundreds of times more than the biosphere could absorb, and resource depletion on a massive scale.Increase in longevity and decrease in infant mortality from technology and religious dogma, added to the overpopulation.The massive HGHGs led to the tipping point of methane turnover, a natural process in reaction to excessive Arctic heat.Business as usual or insufficient actions lead to 5 or 6, and no survival. There aren't any "good" scenarios possible, except for the actual intervention of God."I Can Feel Him In The Morning"

[Child 1:]He kind of started all the plants growing, and he started people.Well, I guess he's kind of big and fat. [Child 2:]He can see us wherever we go ... whatever we do.He has such powerful eyes -- he has to have millions and thousands and billions.And he can still see us when we're bad. [Child 3:]He could be sitting on the table right now, but you can't see him. [Child 4:]He can't be everywhere at once doing everything for everybody.Everybody can't get what they want. [Child 5:]Well, his job is to make us good and to make us happy and make us parents happy. [Child 6:]Good is the right thing and bad is the wrong thing. [Child 7:]When I'm good my mother never yells at me, when I'm bad she does. [Child 8:]Good means to obey your mother and father, to do what the teacher says -- the things right.I feel miserable when I'm ... when I'm bad,I feel miserable on the inside but, on the outside, I just feel like I ... I feel now. [Child 9:]I think ... um, um ... there are more people that are bad than there are good.And, um ... if you're good, you'll live forever.And, if you're bad, you'll die when you die ...[repeat last sentence two more times to fade in echo]Take me down to the water, let me feel it run over me.Let me feel the pain and the coldness, the loneliness that there must be.Whoa, can't you see their dreams, as they go drifting by?Whoa, can't you see their faces, and their tear-soaked eyes?

[CHORUS]I can feel him in the morning, I can feel him in the evening too.I can hear him in the morning, tellin' me what I got to do.Got to make a new world, ought to make the old one right.I can see him in the morning, I can see him in the stars at night.

Take me out to the battlefield, let me hear the shells flying by.Let me hear the sound of the cannons, let me hear them scream and cry.Whoa, can't you hear their dreams, as they tumble to the blood-soaked ground?Whoa, hear them scream for shelter, from the world they never found.

_________________"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”― Chief Seattle“Those Who Have the Privilege to Know Have the Duty to Act”…Albert Einstein

The Earthship or Eco village concept I had in 2003, was also thought of by others, like Jauntyalbatross."Welcome to the website of the Global Ecovillage Network!GEN offers inspiring examples of how people and communities can live healthy, cooperative, genuinely happy and meaningful lifestyles --- beacons of hope that help in the transition to a more sustainable future on Earth. We foster a culture of mutual respect, sharing, inclusiveness, positive intent, and fair energy exchange."http://gen.ecovillage.org/"An ecovillage is an intentional or traditional community using local participatory processes to holistically integrate ecological, economic, social, and cultural dimensions of sustainability in order to regenerate social and natural environments."Survival of the Earth's biosphere requires everyone alive live in an eco-village, by 2020 to perhaps 2028.If that is not accomplished, then they will not survive a 20*C temperature rise or more.The 2050s may not just see the human population crash. The entire biosphere will be in a worse than Permian extinction, to possibly worse---a "Venus Effect".

_________________"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”― Chief Seattle“Those Who Have the Privilege to Know Have the Duty to Act”…Albert Einstein

I have thought of multi-generational spaceships as a way of saving our species since Star Trek days; Climate change has things on Earth looking rough? NASA’s got a fly getaway shipBy Jim Meyer (excerpt)"Turns out Dr. Harold “Sonny” White took time away from his boring schedule of designing hum-drum ion drives, plasma thrusters, and whatever the hell he’s doing in this picture, to get creative. He teamed up with 3-D artist and part-time starship designer Mark Rademaker to show us what an interstellar NASA spaceship might look like."http://grist.org/list/climate-change-ha ... aign=dailyEngage warp drive! Nasa reveals latest designs for a Star Trek-style spacecraft that could make interstellar travel a reality

A Nasa scientist in Houston worked with an artist to create the concept The interstellar spacecraft builds on previous designs that thoeretically allow distant travel by bending space-time Called IXS Enterprise, it is similar to the Star Trek ship of the same name Dr White said the spacecraft could reach Alpha Centauri in two weeks Warp travel is the focus of Christopher Nolan's 2014 movie Interstellar

_________________"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”― Chief Seattle“Those Who Have the Privilege to Know Have the Duty to Act”…Albert Einstein

The Arctic Atmospheric 'Methane Global Warming Veil'. Its Origin in the Arctic Subsea and Mantleand the Timing of the Global Terminal Extinction Events by 2040 to 2050

By Malcolm P.R. Light, Harold Hensel and Sam CaranaJune 8th, 2014"If only a few percent of the subsea methane hydrate reserves in the Arctic Ocean (some 1000 billion tons of Carbon) is dissociated and the methane is released into the atmosphere, it will cause total deglaciation and a major extinction event (Light and Solana 2002). The energy necessary to produce these Arctic methane release rates is relatively small; it requires only about one thousandth of the heat energy input from the Gulf Stream to dissociate the methane hydrates (Figure 30). Furthermore, the energy necessary to produce these Arctic methane release rates represents less than one millionth of the global warming heat energy being added to the oceans, ice, land and atmosphere by human fossil fuel burning (Figure 30). Unfortunately for us, global warming has heated up the oceanic currents fed by the Gulf Stream flowing into the Arctic, causing massive destabilization of the subsea methane hydrates and fault seals and releasing increasing volumes of methane directly into the atmosphere. The total human induced global warming is equivalent to 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs detonating every second (Nuccitelli et al. 2012). Humanity has signed its death warrant and our final extinction will be carried out by Mother Earth within the next 30 to 40 years unless we immediately take extremely drastic action to entirely curb our carbon dioxide pollution, eliminate large quantities of methane from the subsea Arctic Ocean, seawater and atmosphere (down to ca 673 - 700 ppm) and revert completely to renewable energy.....The volume transport of the Gulf Stream has increased by three times since the 1940s due to the rising atmospheric pressure difference set up between the polluted, greenhouse gas rich air above North America and the marine Atlantic air. The increasingly heated Gulf Stream, with its associated high winds and energy-rich weather systems, flows NE to Europe where it recently pummelled Great Britain and Europe with catastrophic storms. Other branches of the Gulf Stream then enter the Arctic and heat up the Arctic methane hydrate seals on subsea and deep high-pressure mantle methane reservoirs below the Eurasian Basin-Laptev Sea transition. This is releasing increasing amounts of methane into the atmosphere producing anomalous temperatures, greater than 20°C above average. Over very short time periods of a few days to a few months the atmospheric methane has a global warming potential from 1000 to 100 times that of carbon dioxide (Light 2012 - 2014; Carana 2012 - 2014).

The whole northern hemisphere is now covered by a thickening atmospheric methane veil that is spreading southwards at about 1 km a day and it already totally envelopes the United States. A giant hole in the equatorial ozone layer has also been discovered in the west Pacific, which acts like an elevator transferring methane from lower altitudes to the stratosphere, where it already forms a dense equatorial global warming stratospheric band that is spreading into the Polar regions. The spreading atmospheric methane global warming veil is raising the temperature of the lower atmosphere many times faster than carbon dioxide does, causing the extreme summer temperatures in Australia and the United States. The front of the expanding 1850 ppb Arctic Atmospheric Mantle Methane Global Warming Veil has passed the northern border of the Gulf Coast and is moving south at about 1 km a day and it should totally envelope the Earth by 2048 (Light 2014). Much of this methane is coming from the subsea extreme methane emission zone (Enrico Anomaly) at the transition from the Eurasian Basin to the Laptev Sea which is sourced at an estimated depth of some 112 km in the upper asthenosphere in the Earths mantle (Light 2014).The United States and Canada must cut their global emissions of carbon dioxide by 80% to 90% in the next 10 to 15 years, otherwise they will be become an instrument of mass destruction of the Earth and its entire human population. Recovery of the United States economy from the financial crisis has been very stupidly based by the present administration on an extremely hazardous "all of the above" energy policy that has allowed continent wide gas fracking, coal and oil sand mining and the return of widespread oil drilling to the Gulf Coast. This large amount of fossil fuel has to be transported and sold which has caused extensive spills, explosions and confrontations with United States citizens over fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline.The United States and Canada must now cease all their fossil fuel extraction and go entirely onto renewable energy in the next 10 to 15 years otherwise they will be guilty of planetary ecocide - genocide by the 2050s"There are numerous charts and graphs as you scroll down.http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/Arctic Methane Emergency Group - AMEG - Urgent Message to Governments from the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, AMEGArctic Sea Ice - Methane Release - Planetary EmergencyUrgent Message to Governments from the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, AMEG

AMEG’s Declaration

Governments must get a grip on a situation which IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has ignored. A strategy of mitigation and adaptation is doomed to fail. It will be impossible to adapt to the worst consequences of global warming, as IPCC suggests.

The Arctic must be cooled, ASAP, to prevent the sea ice disappearing with disastrous global consequences. Rapid warming in the Arctic, as sea ice retreats, has already disrupted the jet stream. The resulting escalation in weather extremes is causing a food crisis which must be addressed before the existing conflicts in Asia and Africa spread more widely."

Rising acid oceans with clathrate cannons firing, flowing through deserted cities, and if overpopulation to CAGW, we have this happening as another rider of death;5/11/2014 Yellowstone, Long Valley Super Volcano & Magnetic Fieldhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REHktXJpA7YMaybe, if it blows it will naturally reduce population to <1% and stop and reverse CAGW, with return to ice age beginning! "ONLY" a 40% extinction or so, and humans get to try again next interglacial!!!If a super, or very large volcano blows or is blown, survival underground with Gen IV, grow lights, a good aquifer, and stockpiled everything for 20 or 30 years, is possible. Otherwise the methane turnover will be a relatively swift but painful killer of species including ours.

_________________"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”― Chief Seattle“Those Who Have the Privilege to Know Have the Duty to Act”…Albert Einstein

8 Summertime Woes That Will Only Get Worse With Climate ChangeEcoWatch | July 1, 2014 2:46 pm | Comments

With the Forth of July upon us, summer is in full swing, the dog days are heating up and today, the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) released a fact sheet on eight summertime woes that will only get worse with climate change.

NRDC’s fact sheet also includes tips that individuals—as well as the nation—can take to ease the misery, highlighting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants.climate-change-summer-hazards-graphicGraphic courtesy of NRDC

_________________"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”― Chief Seattle“Those Who Have the Privilege to Know Have the Duty to Act”…Albert Einstein